"It is," agreed Peter; "I quite admit that I ought to know—only, I don't."
"This is cruel, unmanly!" she said, brokenly. "How could you forget—how can you insult me by pretending that you could forget such a thing as that? It is odious of you to make a—a joke of it all, when you know perfectly well that——"
"My—my dear young lady!" he declared, as she left her speech unfinished, "I am as far from any disposition to be jocular as ever I was in my life. Let me beg you to be a little more explicit. We seem to have got into a trifling misunderstanding, which, I am sure, a little patience will easily put right." ...
"Put right?" said Sophia, behind him. "I was not aware, Peter, that the clock was out of order. What is the matter with it?"
He almost staggered back from the chimneypiece, upon which he had found himself leaning in an attitude of earnest persuasion.
"I—I was only thinking, my love," he said, "that it wanted regulating."
"If it does," said Sophia, "you are hardly the proper person to do it, Peter. The less you meddle with it the better, I should think!"
"Perhaps so, my dear Sophia, perhaps so!" said Peter, sitting down with the utmost docility.
He had narrowly escaped exciting suspicion. It was fortunate that there was nothing compromising in the few words she had overheard, but he must not allow himself to be caught so near the clock again.